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Officials Unsure Of Damage Caused By Flooding

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by Paul Boger on

Hundreds of homes across the state have been destroyed or severely damaged by rising flood waters caused by his weekends storms. Some Mississippi mayors are still trying to assess the damage.

The storms the wreaked havoc upon the Magnolia State over the weekend are gone, but many residents are still dealing with the after-effects.

Hundreds of homes, especially those along the Mississippi River in the Northwest corner of the state, have been affected by some form of flooding. In South Mississippi, flood waters have caused roadways to collapse.

Lee Smithson is the executive director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency.

"185 homes with major damage or destroyed with 649 affected statewide," Smithson says. "We will begin our initial damage assessments focusing a lot on up in the Delta which was so hard hit. We do expect, unfortunately. for those number to go up."

But for city leaders in areas affected by the flooding, there is still no way to tell for sure how much damage has been caused by the rising waters.

Errick Simmons is the Mayor of Greenville.

"What we're hearing from our residents is that the residential, business and agricultural damage is enormous," Simmons says. "We've had economic assessment teams out. We've got stacks of papers still to process, and so this impact is going to be enormous but we just don't have the numbers at this point in time."

To further complicate damage assessments, forecasters are expecting more rain within the next few days.